Well, time to get up, walk around, and get moving on our continued trip around southern Chile! What do you expect us to do this early in the morning? We get up, stretch, have a quick shower, and get to walking around this beautiful lake!
Absolutely gorgeous! What a nice way to wake up, and early enough that we have the beach to ourselves, haha. Can’t complain about that! And just in case it wasn’t obvious enough for you in the above picture, we also zoomed in a bit on the Villarrica Volcano.
And maybe if you really look… you will see that we weren’t the only people out on the beach even though we just told you we had the beach to ourselves. But, there’s nowhere near the amount of people as yesterday. So we didn’t completely lie, hehe. But what a nice view.
But, with that it is time to get going! We go pack up the tent and all of our other things, throw them all on our backs, and get walking back towards the main square in Coñaripe to catch the next bus to our next destination. At least it’s a nice walk along the beach!
Now…. Look at how narrow the street is between these trees. Pretty narrow, huh? Just enough for a regular car to pass through on their way to find parking for the beach. Makes complete sense. Well… as we were leaving the area we saw a MASSIVE vehicle come in here. But MASSIVE really undersells how big this vehicle is. I am kicking my travel partner for not taking a picture, but his jaw was literally on the floor by the size of the “truck”. The person that was with us also had to pick his jaw off of the ground. And if I could, I would also have to pick up my jaw off the ground. We don’t know what the vehicle would be called… but it was a HUGE military-looking vehicle that had German plates on it and a couple of people inside. It looked like an all terrain vehicle, but not “all terrain” meaning a few bumps in the road, “all terrain” meaning it can probably make it to the top of a volcano. It was literally insane, incredible! But, since we don’t have photographic proof… let’s move on with our journey, haha.
We take one last look at the beach in Coñaripe and then head inland to the main square. As we have mentioned before, most of these squares have little stalls all around them in a sort of traditional fair where you can buy all kinds of things. Here you can make out clothing and plants, but there was also a lot of woodworking, jewelry, and food along with many handicrafts and souvenirs.
We continue to walk around the area as we wait for the bus to Panguipulli. We essentially just walk around aimlessly looking at little restaurants, food stalls, and the main square. As we walk around we take our chance to buy some food and groceries that we may need later. At a certain point in time our friend gets tired of my travel partner’s wanderings and just sits down and leaves us to wander alone, haha. We can’t blame him, especially when we all have heavy bags to carry. But, we at least got to see some more public art! That counts as a win.
But realistically… there’s not much to wander around in without going further from the central square. Since we aren’t entirely sure about when the bus will come, our travel friend is stationed at the bus stop and every few minutes my travel partner heads over towards the main street through Coñaripe to double check that the bus isn’t on its way yet. But, as we wait, another Araucaria in the main square.
Araucaria’s are very cool, native to this area of Chile, and because of that we have been told that they cannot be cut. Supposedly, endemic species to Chile are not allowed to be cut or destroyed (if not a tree, for example). At least this is what we have been told. If someone would like to fact check us, we are more than happy to provide accurate information, as always.
But we continue walking around. The locals have probably already figured out what we’re doing since they have probably seen us a million times as we just circle the square, haha. But, while we wait, let us clear something up. We have an idea of when the bus should be coming, it’s just that people told us that it is not 100% guaranteed to be at that exact time. Again, these busses are micro busses, so if there weren’t passengers on previous stops it may arrive and leave a little earlier. This is why we can’t go too far. But… we see busses that are going to Lican Ray aaaaaall the time. We even go ask our travel friend if he thinks that we should just go back to Lican Ray and figure it out from there, but we decide to be patient. And for your patience, look at this old locomotive in the main square, haha.
Alright, we are really scratching the bottom of the barrel here, haha. We’re not sure where else to go, what else to take pictures of, so we don’t. We just walk a bit more trying to get those steps in before we sit on the bus. But, eventually the bus does arrive and we get on it. It was not a bad ride at all! We recommend sitting on the right next to the window (if possible) because the bus goes along the bottom of Lake Calafquén before leaving the lake to then move towards Lake Panguipulli. It is a relatively quick ride (~50 minutes) before we pull into “downtown” Panguipulli! Welcome to a new city in southern Chile!
Well, again, we have no idea where we will spend the night, haha. We arrive in Panguipulli with zero plan, but that’s okay. We got off the bus right in the main square of the town and head into the above tourist information centre. In there they explain to us that there is only really one camping in the area, with lots of options if we have a car. Well… we don’t, so the one available camping site it is! Haha. We walk there and arrive very quickly, which is always nice. We talked to the owner and he told us that we could go in and take a look at our options to setup a tent and then decide. As if we would say no, haha. It would have had to be terrible, which it was far from. So, we agreed to the price (~10 000 pesos) and planted our tent. Not a bad location, huh? And a few others to keep us company. We only really need washrooms, water, and ideally a shower… and this campsite had all of the above, hehe.
But, you can imagine that there was no way that my travel partner stayed put, haha. As in Lican Ray and Coñaripe we immediately switched our things into our “day pack,” locked the tent up, and then went out to explore Panguipulli! Luckily our campsite is extremely close to the main square, so we are immediately back there and taking a look at this Church of Saint Sebastian. To us it looks very German, which makes sense when you know that a large portion of southern Chile was settled by Germans.
In the same area we see this sculpture. We’re not 100% sure why it is here… it is a hand holding a nest with a little bird… but we always enjoy public art, haha. Even if we don’t fully understand it.
We continue through all of the main street of Panguipulli where we believe the majority of the stores are located, including restaurants. Why do we focus on restaurants? Because our travel friend decided to stop at one while we kept wandering around, haha. We continued down to the waterfront on our own to take a look at what we could find. First? An extremely old locomotive.
As far as we can find information online… it seems as though all of this region was connected by rail service in the “ancient” past, hehe, but that seems to have stopped a really long time ago. We were able to find pictures online of trains in the region in the 1960s when they carried cargo. And, what cargo could they have carried? Well… you may be able to guess because we mentioned Panguipulli a few days ago before arriving. Bonus points if you can remember!
One of the main things that would have been leaving Panguipulli all those years ago is likely wood. This region of Chile is still known for their gigantic wood industry. And the reason we mentioned it a few days ago was because we were visiting the “Old Bridge” in Villarrica, where the memorial to those killed at the bridge was located. Those killed were from the Panguipulli sawmill. You can go back and read about it in a tiny bit more depth, but, after the 11th of September 1973 coup in Chile workers at the Panguipulli sawmill rose up in support of President Allende and demanded that the police fulfill their duty and stand by the deposed president. Instead, the workers were arrested and would be eventually killed and disappeared at the bridge in Villarrica. But now that we are in Panguipulli we can expand on this a bit further…
These men were employees at the Complejo Forestal y Maderero Panguipulli, essentially a forestry company in the region. How did this forestry company come to exist? Well, people occupied various territories in the region to take control of the forestry industry here. After Salvador Allende took office, his government officially expropriated the lands that these people were occupying in order to form the Complejo Forestal y Maderero Panguipulli. This likely explains why the workers had an affinity towards Allende and would have been against a coup d’état. However, after the coup the military dictatorship actually kept the company running because it was very well administered and productive. This lead to tense situations at the company where the military intervened a few times, many workers participated in acts against the military dictatorship, and there was a guerilla in the lands of the company from 1980-1981. These stories are better told from other towns in southern Chile, so we will pass them over for now. (However, if you are interested, you can look up the nearby town of Neltume). The company ceased to exist in 1988 in the final years of the military dictatorship when the military sold off this state enterprise and the land associated with it to private owners. These, and other similar companies, continue to operate throughout southern Chile. You can see that there are many, many trees all around southern Chile, but we think that it looks nicer with all of the greenery below.
Continuing on along the waterfront we take a look at what we can see. Apparently the train is very missed in these parts, haha. Pretty much every little town has something related to those days. Hopefully it will be able to return one day, we know that the current Chilean government has been trying to expand the rail network to what it used to be before the military dictatorship.
And we continue a tiny bit further until we reach these statues, the Founders and Forgers of Panguipulli (Fundadores y Forjadores de Panguipulli). It is a statue that is suppose to show the original inhabitants of Panguipulli and it includes the Mapuche, the missionaries, and the settlers. Interesting.
That’s pretty much the end of the “touristy” waterfront, but we keep going anyway. While we were taking all of these pictures our travel friend caught up to us again and joined us as we finished off the waterfront. It didn’t take us too much longer to eventually reach the municipal beach. As always, the area where the stairs meet the beach was pretty full, but we just went a little further towards the right to have our own little piece of the beach, hehe.
So, we walked along the beach to the right until it eventually closed up with weeping willows, wetlands, rocks, and a little swing where people were. We didn’t want to have to walk off of the little path so we turned around and went back towards the main beach. Here we finally got in for a little swim as it was pretty hot out. It was super nice to be able to cool off, and the water is pretty clear.
But, after a while in the lake, my travel partner steps out to dry off in the hot sun. It doesn’t take too long, but it is long enough for him to sit still and take some more pictures. Can you see in the picture above that there is a mountain off in the distance? In Chile it always seems like there is a mountain off in the distance. Luckily, my travel partner brought his bigger camera to get a closer look.
This is the Mocho-Choshuenco Volcano, and it is only about 40 kilometers away from the beach at Panguipulli (you can get a sense of the distance we’ve covered since we have seen this volcano from Lican Ray, then Coñaripe, and now Panguipulli). The entirety of southern Chile has been shaped by the volcanoes that dot the landscape.
But with that, it is time to get our things and start heading back towards the campsite. It is almost 7 pm, but you wouldn’t be able to tell with the long days. That’s another thing we have enjoyed since leaving the Middle East. In the Middle East the days were much, much shorter than in Chile. Obviously that makes sense because we were in the Middle East in the middle of their winter while we are in Chile in the middle of their summer, but we love it, haha. As we go back towards the road along the waterfront, we take our last look at the Panguipulli beach. You can see just how full it is, and you may be able to make out some of the activities you can do while you’re here.
We walk back the exact way we came, this time not taking as many pictures. But, you can see what the waterfront walk looks like in Panguipulli, with a couple of vendors along the route if you’re interested.
And then we take our last picture of Lake Panguipulli for the day (or so we thought). It really is amazing scenery in southern Chile.
As we walk back through the main street in Panguipulli we’re on the lookout for a supermarket. We find one just off of the main square, go inside to get a few things and load more data onto our SIM card, and now we’re really on our way back to the campsite. Again, we walk by the main square with San Sebastian Church.
Now that we’re a bit closer, we got a bit more information for you. This church is one of the main symbols of Panguipulli and it was built in 1947. It is said that the entire community participated in its construction and it is modeled after Swiss architecture, so we weren’t too geographically far off when we said that it reminded us of German architecture earlier. (Please don’t hate on us Swiss readers).
All very interesting, but on top of that we also have the statue in front of the church. This is a tribute to the Virgin of Carmen (Virgen del Carmen, we don’t know how it would be translated), who is the patron saint of Chile. The tribute was erected by the Arab community of Panguipulli, a fitting tie to our Middle Eastern voyages. (Chile actually has a very large Arab community, many of who came from the Ottoman Empire, and Chile is home to the largest Palestinian population outside of the Middle East).
But, with that, we’re back at our campsite and ready to call it a night. We make some food, get comfortable, but then my travel partner starts to say that he has not walked enough today… How?! Dear reader, you have seen that we have walked, how is he not satisfied?! Well… our travel friend says there’s no chance that he goes with us, so we’re on our own! My travel partner has the brilliant idea to walk the main street of Panguipulli from the main square to the waterfront and film it all. Maybe one day you will see it on our YouTube page, but at the speed that he publishes those videos… it could be a while! This is the reason he gave me for not allowing me to take any selfies along the main road. The first picture I could get of myself was at a dock at the end of the waterfront. You can see that the sun is setting just after 9 pm. Not a bad way to end our day!
We finish off the waterfront by taking in the public art at the “painted steps” of Panguipulli, but then it is time to start heading back towards the campsite again. My partner is now starting to feel a bit tired. (Finally!)
As we approach the main square again, we notice something that we had not noticed before. It seems to be a memorial of some sort… As we are both naturally curious, we approach.
As with all of our travels, we like to put things into context and try to pass on a little bit of knowledge about what we see and the places we visit. We honestly had no idea what we were looking at when we approached the above memorial, but then something clicked for us. We remember hearing about something in Chile years ago… and with this memorial (and confirming it tomorrow in the daylight) it all clicked for us.
So, back in Santiago we told you a bit about the Estallido Social (Social Explosion) that shook Chile in 2019. These protests started over an increase in the metro fare in Santiago, but soon spread to be about much more than that. Chile is a country that is heavily concentrated in the capital with about 35% of the population living in metro Santiago. However, the entire length of Chile also wanted things to improve for them, so the protests quickly spread throughout Chile. The police response was very heavy handed with police (and military) mainly cracking down on protests with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets. Why do we tell you all of this? Because we are setting the scene for what happened in Panguipulli.
As we have said, this memorial is just beside the main square in Panguipulli. But, what is this memorial for? This is where a street performer was killed by the police in the context of the Estallido Social. Many, many street corners in Chile have street performers, and Panguipulli is no different. Back in 2021 Francisco Andrés Martínez Romero was performing at this street corner while juggling knives. The police said that they suspected the knives were real and that “Franco” posed some kind of risk to someone during an identity check and he was shot. This caused outrage throughout Panguipulli and the rest of Chile soon followed. It was an incident that made national and international news, and it is why we are telling you about it now. And, it is also important to point out that the Estallido Social was still going on (although to a slightly lesser extent) in February 2021 (from an initial start date of October 2019).
But, on that sad note we crossed the street, saw the sights from earlier today in front of the picturesque church, and then made our way back to the campsite where we would again relax and look up at the stars before going to sleep. Good night from Panguipulli!
